Coraline
Directed by Henry Selick (2009)
Magical, marvellous, and beautifully made — to say I thoroughly enjoyed Henry (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach) Selick’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline would be an understatement.
While the concept and story are fairly well-trodden regions of children’s fiction (from the magic of Lewis Carroll, to the darkness of Roald Dahl and Phillip Pullman) as far as I’m concerned there’s always room for more, if it’s done well, and there can be no doubt that Selick has done a wonderful job of bringing Gaiman’s dark and disturbing fairy story to life. And it is quite dark … and disturbing … in fact it’s a deliciously uncomfortable watch in parts, and the story just becomes darker the more you think about it.
If you enjoyed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the idea of Ian McShane playing a russian mouse-circus trainer excites you, then Coraline will not disappoint. The great voice cast (from the aforementioned McShane, to French and Saunders, John Hodgman, Teri Hatcher, and of course, Dakota Fanning as Coraline herself) are the key to making it more than just a good looking, well produced movie: bringing depth, vulnerability and believability to the kind of exaggerated characters necessitated by fairy stories.
As a Sunday night movie, I can’t think of many better than Coraline, unless you’re prone to nightmares…. Consider this a hearty recommendation.
